Berserker
Class Statistics Biography Beserker Strategies *Dual Wielding is a power specialty for the berserker. It should be used frequently with the right build for more speed. However, using a two-handed weapon with the correct build will do high amounts of damage at faster speeds. At level 50, however, it is advised that you find an elite dual wielding weapon (example Raging Axes of the Merciless) because you will benefit greatly from the elite armor (Dual Wield Radius, Dual Wield damage, Weapon Damage, etc.). *Always reserve a combo level in combat either to activate your War Cry immediately or for a Ruiner to get you out of a sticky situation. *Dodging often is a good way to avoid taking damage. *Choosing alignment for a Beserker changes the way they behave, Cybernetics boosts that already impressive Melee damage and a welcome health boost while Human aligned Beserkers get another skill to boost attack speed and increased ruiner damage. :*Cybernetic Beserkers get more bang for buck with combos boosting damage slide attacks dealing more damage but. :*Because a Beserker can rapidly go up combo levels they can use Ruiners more liberaly, Spreader of Ruin ups the range your powerful weapon based ruiners this is a good thing for Ruiners with a knockback or freezing effect. The same applies for battle cries. *Human Beserkers remain frail but also remain dangerous :*The Everburning Heart, Call of Ruin and Quick to Anger skills equate to more damaging Ruiners more often. It also allows the attacker to be faster than a cybernetic berserker. :*You will also gain the Hero's Heart skill which increases your attack speed Engulfing Rage adds knockback Swift of Claw adds increased attack speed which you choose is down to prefence but knockback helps keep the enemy landing blows on your relatively low health and armour. :*Since your combo meter will grow extremely rapidly, don't hesitate to use it! A well-placed Ruiner or a battle cry before a big fight can more than compensate for a human Berserker's low HP and weak armor. Use your special abilities before you get into serious trouble, not after, and never die with a level left on your combo meter. *Hordes of Rupture, Frozen and, charged Enthalpy Goblins are the bane of any Berserker, one wrong move and you could be frozen or dead. Resort to ballistics when facing Rupture and Frozen to minimize health loss but if faced with Enthalpy Goblins, your best bet is to let your Spider handle them. *No matter which alignment you choose, Berserkers benefit greatly from armor and health bonus runes. Beserker Skill Tree Advice excepted from Darth's Interest in Beserkers page First, why should you play as a Berserker? The Berserker is the ultimate melee warrior of the Aesir. He is to close combat what the Commando is too ranged combat. While the other classes can certainly dish out their share of damage, the Berserker lives for the fight, forsaking health, defense, and ranged combat skills for ability to slay his foes in Braveheart style fashion. While a properly specced left path Champion who has absolutely everything go right for him can do a greater amount of damage in a one shot kill, nobody can surpass the melee damage that a Berserker can do on a consistent basis. He is also the only character in the game who can dual wield swords and staff weapons (think Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones.) If you don’t like ballistic weapons in general or the aiming mechanics of Too Human in particular, and you only want to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy through close combat, you should seriously consider the Berserker. The first skill in the Berserkers tree is A Capacity for Rage. This is the exact same skill as the Human alignment skill Quick to Anger. When capped, it grants you a 154% increase to the speed with which you gain combo meter. When combined with Quick to Anger, you will earn combo 308% faster than normal! Also, each of these skills has an additional benefit. When capped, they grant you an additional combo level. So if both of these skills are capped, a Berserker can have 5 combo levels. This skill is shared in co-op too, so the Champion you are playing with will now have an added combo level. For the melee intensive Berserker, serious consideration should be given to maxing out this skill. The Middle path-The Flash Fierce attacks are great, as they do lots of damage, and never run out of ammunition. The problem is sometimes with their range and the frequency of their use. The skill Onslaught of Claws takes care of that. It will increase the rate that you can unleash your fierce attacks by 70%. Since the Berserker is as handicapped at ranged combat as the Commando is at melee, fierce attacks are a great way to make up for this deficiency. When combined with the Human skill Desire to Overcome, these attacks have quite an impressive range, allowing the Berserker to deal with polarities without poisoning, burning or freezing himself. Ankle Biter is another deployable spider. This time it fires at enemies, and everyone struck by it is hit with the “snared effect” halting all movement. This can buy the Berserker valuable time to engage active enemies and then turn to the others at his leisure. Capping this skill out grants a 70% increase to the spider’s duration. Engulfing Rage. If you have ever wanted Too Human to have a “run” button, this is it. When active, this battle cry increases the speed of you and your ally by a maximum of 70%. Other skills increase your attack speed as your combo meter grows, but this one just increases it flat out. As a benefit, if two middle path Berserkers are playing a co-op game and they both activate Engulfing Rage simultaneously, their speed will increase by 140%! How fast is that? Fast enough for you to beat Hod to the elevator in the Ice Forrest (Don’t do this. The game was not designed for you to beat Hod, and if you do, it will glitch the game out, and you will have to restart.) The last skill in this path is Weapon Recovery. It increases your slide attack speed by 14%. If you are a Berserker, you will spend the majority of your time doing slide attacks, so this skill is of great benefit. Remember, the more and faster you slide, the less of a chance of you getting hit. For the low hit point Berserker, this is essential. Left Path-Tasmanian Devil This path is all about speed. There is a debate over which is better, attack speed or attack damage. It is a personal preference, as neither one is inherently better. Look at it like this. Mike Tyson can hit somebody and knock them out in two punches. Bruce Lee has to hit them 6 times for the same effect. However Bruce Lee can hit eight times in the time Mike Tyson can hit twice. It all depends on you, the player. The Bear’s Boiling Blood increases your attack speed as your combo meter grows. This means that the higher your combo meter climbs, the faster your Berserker will attack, for a maximum of 14%. If you choose the human alignment, there is a similar skill in that path, so you will be a blinding flash of blades when your hit counter hits 150. The Spider here is Loki’s kiss. It attaches itself to an enemy and explodes, doing concussive damage as well as initiating the fire status effect. Personally, this is one of my least favorite spiders. You can’t control who it attaches to, and sometimes it won’t attach at all. However, when it does work, it is impressive. Dropping it by a troll pretty much gurantees that it will attach and blow off his weapon arm. The left path battle cry is Swift of Claw. Unlike the Bear's Boiling Blood, this will permanently increase your melee attack speed by up to 42%, regardless of your hit counter. This won’t speed up your movement speed likethe middle path's Engulfing Rage, but once you begin your slide attacks, you will see a marked increase in melee movement. The final skill is Unrelenting Blades. This will increase your attack speed as long as you are using dual wield swords or staves by 42%. So if you cap the skills in this tree you will become a whirling dervish of death. Imagine the Tasmanian Devil, armed with two swords, right after he just drank a case of Red Bull. That is the left path Berserker. Right Path-Two Fists of Death This is the damage focused path for the Berserker. The first skill here is Brutality. This is an odd skill, similar to the Berserker’s Grief skill in the Defender’s right path. When capped, you have a 70% chance of channeling any damage you receive into bonus damage on your next attack. 70% is pretty good, even for Vegas. Say you hit for 2000 points of damage, but then you take 1000 points of damage. Chances are the next attack you land will hit for 3000 points of damage. While the prospect of getting hit is not pleasant, it fits with the Berserker’s “profile” if you will. When you hit him, he just becomes angrier, dishing the damage back to his attacker. The spider here, Sleep Storm of Steel, is another exploding mine that inflicts concussive damage and hits enemies with a burning status effect. Unlike Loki’s kiss, this mine will explode on contact with the enemy, not search one out to attach too, so there is little delay with it once you pop it. Shield Biter is the battle cry, and when activated, it increases your melee damage by 84%. Combine this with the final skill, Warrior of the Twinned Claw, which grants a 42% increase to damage done with dual wield weapons, and your Berserker can kill most things in one shot. So, if you use dual wield swords, and you slot your armor for 30% sword damage, and 30% dual wield damage, and then you activate your battle cry, and finally you cap off Warrior of the Twinned claw, that is a damage increase of 186%! This is before air melee damage or finishing moves are factored in. Also, if you choose the the Cybernetic path, you will gain additional damage modifiers based on your hit counter and slide attacks. You can see how the right path berserker is like a human wrecking crew. In closing, the Berserker is fun to play with, especially if you like straight up melee combat. He is really fun to watch once he gets his slide attacks going, as he moves so fast, especially using the left path, that he becomes a blur. Also, his class bonuses also allow him to slide attack over far greater distances than his compatriots, so be ready for that. Be advised, people are not kidding when they say he has low hit points and defenses. Remember, it is only a game, so have fun and as a general rule, prepare to die a lot when first utilizing this class. Once you get him leveled up, this won’t be as much of an issue. And 2 Skein of Ablation Charms work wonders for the Berserker. Personally, I run my Berserker with two Skeins of Ablation, and they keep me alive in most situations. Theoretical Melee Damage Cap (Yet again, I have discovered another damage modifier that catapults the Berserker's damage to even more ridiculous levels. Here's the (Again) corrected figure) The following calculations attempt to calculate a damage cap for a level 50 Human Aligned Berserker, taking the right branch of the class skill tree and using Raging axes of the merciless (most damaging Human Aligned Berserker weapon)(This figure assumes Combo Zero After Battle Cry Use and does not include damage bonuses from Slide Attacks or any non- mentioned skills) Base strength: 351 >Rune bonus (Capped): +50% >Total strength: 351 + 50% = 521.5 Base Weapon Damage: 1,881 >Rune bonus (Staff damage) (Capped): +30% >Rune bonus (Dual wield melee damage): +30% >Rune Bouns (Dual Wield Attack Radius): +50% >Skill bonus (Warrior of the twinned claw) (capped +4: assumes mastery cap): +42% >Total Weapon Damage: 1,881 + 102% = 4,740 Combined Strength & Weapon damage: 4,740 + 521 = 5,261 Combined damage with class melee damage modifier: 5,261 + 40% = 8,751 >Battlecry Bonus (Shield Biter) (Capped +4: Assumes mastery cap): +84% >Total Damage: 8,751 + 84% = 16,101 If a similarly specced Berserker were to pop an identical battlecry in co-op, this number could soar an additional 7,350 damage, totaling 23,451! That number rivals a Zerker's finisher! The effect of a Champion's "Storm of Mortal Wounds" battle cry would be even more ridiculous, catapulting this figure to around 32,202! That's enough to five-hit Grendel! Factor in the Berserker's attack speed and you're dealing with what is possibly the fastest boss kill in the game! Category:Berserker Category:Archetypes